Where I Do Not Exist, Nor You
by JadeLecter
Summary: Every day, Tonks, being her usual inexorable, hope-for-the-best self, every day she tries to smooth out the world but it is crumpled and crinkled, and the part where Remus sits, it is torn. Remus and Tonks, throughout the books.


**Author Note: Well, here's another Remus/Tonks, this time encompassing moments from the entire series of time they'd met. Yes, they are in chronological order, because or else it would get confusing for me. All the poems in italics used between the chapters are love poems by Pablo Neruda. **

**Except for, of course, the verse that Remus says to Tonks, which I wrote by myself ahah. **

**Please do leave reviews and comments, I am very grateful for them**

**DISCLAIMER: Don't own Harry Potter. **

**XX**

**Where I Do Not Exist, Nor You**

**i.**

Tonks fed on questions like sustenance, she wondered and loudly asked, questioned, and queried. Curiosity hung on her; she even _smelled_ of curiosity, her father used to say. But this was a wonderful time for questions, Tonks thinks excitedly, her eyes wide and bright, almost childish. There would be a man from the _Order of the Phoenix _to take her to the s_ecret location_ and they would _strategize_. She was a fully-grown Auror, she thinks a little scathingly, her eyes glittering, and here she was, fantasizing about spies and secrets and wars. She wonders what life as a spy would be like, vaguely, maybe they would give her a Muggle gun. She likes exclamation marks and question marks, Tonks did, and she hated full-stops.

"Hello."

"Hi." She said brightly, almost tripping in her haste. "What's your name? I'm Tonks, the new recruit. I've just qualified last year, you know. So, where's the headquarters? I don't really want to-"

"I never said I was from the Order." The pale, tired-looking man smiled dryly.

"Nor did I!"

_In this part of the story I am the one who_

_Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because_

_I love you_

_I love you, Love, in fire and in blood_

**ii.**

Remus had beautiful hands, Tonks thinks, svelte and pale, scarred and crossed. He had the hands of a piano player, but he did not play. He reclines back in his chair, almost tilts it (oh, he was more like Sirius than he though), and there is a glint in his eyes that never seemed to disappear. Tonks wants to _be_ something to him, to all of them, something more than the pink-haired child in a world full of business and footsteps and fighting. She tries to draw herself into the conversation, but she fades out again, and she wants to leave. She catches Remus's eye, surprised, as she is that he bothered looking at her, and he smiles. For one infinite moment, she feels buzzing and thrumming welling up in her stomach, singing and shocking her.

He leans toward her.

"I have a feeling Mad-Eye's report today is more out of duty than anything." Remus says wryly, his mouth twisting like a miracle.

"He'd give a report on the faulty toilet in the office if he didn't have anything to say." She said, rather stupidly, she thinks.

"I see. Do you and Mad-Eye often converse about faulty lavatories?" He asked her, leaning closer across the table. Laughter blooms inside her as if a chorus, and it almost bubbles out of her lips as she claps her hands to her lips to muffle the noise. "What?" He asked, and he looked almost innocent under the darkness of his tired eyes.

"You do know nobody says lavatory anymore. You do know that, right, Remus?" It was the first time she had called him Remus, and not Lupin, and the word left a sweet, light taste in her mind, like froth and light and home. Remus's lips stretch into a lazy smile, and she imagines the paleness kissing her bright hair, and she thinks of moonlight, starlight, candlelight.

_Only do not forget, if I wake up crying_

_It's only because in my dream I am a lost child_

_Hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands_

**iii.**

They sit together in the grey room of the black house, cold and things run in their heads, spin circles, but they cannot say it. Tonks wants to shrink the world down and throw it away; she does not know why she feels down, maybe, she is sucking the unhappiness out of Remus. She could feel it running in the room, guilt in cold, curdled streams. It was the first time she understood that Remus lived steeped in guilt, swam in it happily, and he seemed to sustain himself on the sheer apologies he uttered. He was guilty for surviving, she realizes with an overwhelming gasp, it seemed too surreal and simple and too, too much. Who would feel guilty for _living_?

Maybe, she thinks a little tiredly, when everybody else is dead.

"Sirius misses them a lot, doesn't he?" Tonks could not stay quiet for more than two minutes, and she knew he would know who the _them_ was. When it was war, you knew the unspoken dead, you knew who _them_ meant, especially when _they_ had passed away fifteen years ago. "He seems to."

"He does." Remus says with finality and a smile. He smiles a lot, Tonks wonders, but how many are real? "They were his anchors to ground, because Sirius is a helium balloon, he would fly away, if he has no anchor."

"I can see that." She grins, and wonders if Sirius has recovered from his sixth hangover in a row. "Who's his anchor now?"

"Harry." Remus's smile stretches to show a glint of teeth, and he looks truly happy, yet only for a fleeting second. "The Order. You. Work."

"And you." Tonks finishes, she feels, oddly, that when she talks to Remus about things that weren't shared jokes at stuffy meetings, she feels as if she was sliding into place, like a rumbling train at a station. "Do you miss them?"

"Every day." He considers. "There are days worse than others, and there are days better than the worst."

She finds it sad how he compares everything to the worst.

"What do you do, though?" She probes, curiosity killed the Tonks. "Sirius drinks, Harry has nightmares, what do you do?"

"I read." He says simply, as if reading is an archaic term, as if he had no preferences. She wonders if he dreams at night, of laughing boys and glinting green lakes. She does not know that he dreams of a girl with whole-hearted life clinging to her, and a smile that drew and erased, and hair that was busy, changing, and eternal.

Remus reads, Sirius drinks, Molly cooks, and Tonks asks questions.

Oh, they all have their ways.

_If suddenly you do not exist,_

_If suddenly you no longer live,_

_I shall live on. _

_I do not dare,_

_I do not dare to write it_

_If you die._

_I shall live on. _

**iv.**

Christmas.

Kiss.

Touch.

Please, do.

Tangled.

Breathe.

**v.**

Sirius is dead and the world is a crumpled sheet of paper. Every day, Tonks, being her usual inexorable, hope-for-the-best self, every day she tries to smooth out the world but it is crumpled and crinkled, and the part where Remus sits, it is torn. They perform daily tasks, and they go on missions but she is still alive, and Remus is dead. He does not cry, like she does, but she can see the grief dawning on his face and sadness elbows it's way over a smile. She wants to shove it away, to throw it down a cliff, she wants to break and shatter and burn Remus's grief like it is breaking and shattering and burning him.

"Don't think." She told him, as they sat by a bridge over a small stream, on break. She did not tell him what not to think about, because he knew, of course he knew. Don't think about Sirius Orion Black, Marauder, friend and brother, that's what she meant. It was a pale day, and their cheeks are relentlessly painful from pretending to smile so much.

"Then what do I think about?" He asks quietly, and the sheen of grief pokes through his face and she tries to breathe through the tears that threatened. Remus's face was a wall, she thinks, and so many people had vandalized it by dying, or betraying, or running.

"Think about me." Tonks says, and leans forward to place a kiss on the lips that deserved a million more. They sit close, and she can hear his throat working and feel his arms tensing, and she tries not to think about what he must wish for, and dream for, for his friends, for his past and school. It was foolish of her to think that he would think about her, when he once had so much more.

"I am." He said softly, his mouth an almost-smile. "I always have been."

"But you are sad." She notes obviously, placing a hand on his cheek.

"Yes." He says.

_I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.  
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;  
so I love you because I know no other way than this: _

**vi. **

They are ice and fire and wind and rain, thrashing and twisting and it is almost a dance of bruises and scratches. She is angry, Tonks is, and so she runs her nails down the sweat of his back, and he bites down hard on her neck, teeth grazing her ear, in a manner eerily reminiscent of another bite that had happened at age six. Their bodies are sweat-slick and he is inside her, his hands on her breasts, grinding and kneading and kissing, and she drags her nails down his back, again, again, again until there is blood on his back and there are bruises on their mouth.

He comes with a strangled groan and it is almost as if she sees the real Remus behind the screen of politeness, and the mask of grief and hurt and guilt. The real Remus had sweat dripping down his china and blood on his back and oblivion in his eyes; the real Remus moaned her name, as it had never been said before. The thought sends her over the thin precipice of control, and she arches her back, she is almost one with him and his mouth and tongue are on her cheek, she can feel him drawing out and she comes with a cry, tears sliding down her temples, and his fingers run down her slit, soothing her.

After it is over, they lay next to each other in a bed that is now spotted with blood from scratches and stains.

"Tell me something." Tonks says.

"What do you want me to say?" It is at these times that Tonks loves Remus the most, when sweat stands on his face and there is no grief or hurt or newness, only the image of her, her, her.

"Tell me you love me." She demands, she knows she is childish and petulant, but she wants to hear it. "In your own words, don't just say I love you."

He rewards her with something better.

"I love you inexorably, inexcusably, terribly," he says, his voice quiet.

"I love your presence, your absence and your loss,

I love your heart, your taste, your blood

Is my blood, to taste, to touch, to hold.

I love you like a sponge, a shade,

I love you enough to steal your darkness,

I love you with ragged tenderness and passionate kisses,

You are a glistening, shining expanse of stone,

I am the rain that wears you down."

He is gone in the morning.

_so I wait for you like a lonely house  
till you will see me again and live in me.  
Till then my windows ache_

**vii.**

Sometimes, while he sits in the desolation of the werewolf camp, Remus thinks of her. No, he doesn't think of her, he tries far too hard not to, but she, in her usual boisterous, inexplicable way, she elbows her way into his thoughts and stayed there, laughing. There is light every time he thinks of her; there is bright light, vivid light seeping out from her. He holds the memory of her too tight to him, and it burns like fire and makes him ache with longing.

He draws her, one-day when the others had gone to hunt for the night. He draws her in charcoal and smudges, and today, he draws the wavering flame that Tonks always was, with her pink hair and her golden eyes. He draws her like wildfire and morning wind, and if you went close to the drawing, you could almost taste her breath and hear her heart. He draws ad draws and draws, until his fingers become black with charcoal and his eyes red from concentration. He draws over and over again, countless pictures of her, smiling, laughing, lights, lights, lights. He draws her in bed, naked except for the curtain of bright hair, he draws her on a tree, laughing, she was always laughing. After he is done, he is panting, sweating and oh, he was so tired of everything. His hands were black with coal and smudged on his face, and a pile of drawing lay beneath him, showing her at every moment.

He pulls out his wand.

"_Incendio_."

_I hunger for your sleek laugh,  
your hands the color of a savage harvest,  
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails;  
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. _

**viii.**

There is gladness in her every time she sees Remus, there is gladness and sadness and a fear. She is glad that he is alive, that he is breathing, and he is beautiful. The sadness swims though, because he looked so tired, his eyes looked so unworthy and dead, and his skin was always pale, scarred and bruised. She was sad because every time he stumbled into her door, with a haunt and a fear in his eyes, every single time he refuses to tell her what he had seen, she aches. And she is so scared, not that he will go away, because he always will, but she is scared that maybe one day he will never come back.

"Remus." She tells him, and he presses his lips to hers, hungrily. She feels their teeth clicking and she runs her tongue along Remus's feeling the sharp incisors and she remembers how they felt on her neck.

"Save me." He whispers, it was almost inaudible, but so was everything else Remus had ever said. She wants to save him, she wants to save him and drink away his pain, she wants to ache along with him, but she couldn't. Her ache was a different one that Remus's, hers had to do with longing and belonging. He ached for guilt, sadness, and he ached with an intensity that Tonks had never seen before; she sometimes thinks he lives for his pain.

"From what?" she asks, because she was Tonks, and questions spill easier than understandings.

His hands touch her neck, and she shudders, those were the very hands she used to admire and long for. She wonders, quietly, if Remus would kiss her again, and he does so, and this time it was not a hungry kiss, it was rather a sad kiss, one that dripped with unworthiness and love. He should be loved, Tonks thinks fiercely, this broken and bent man, he should be loved by millions and millions. And still, he kisses her, almost without breath, as if he was nosing for sustenance, their lips did not part. When he finally drew away, Tonks had tears on her face, which he touched with his thumbs. He did not wipe them away, they were not his tears, it was not his place, but he kisses them because God, oh God, he had the right to do at least that, did he not?

"From you." He says, long after she had forgotten what her question was.

_But I love your feet  
only because they walked  
upon the earth and upon  
the wind and upon the waters,  
until they found me._

**ix.**

Today, they are getting married, and they are in a quiet, miserable church. Remus stares at himself and wonders vaguely, is this what it is like to be saved? He hurts a little, not much, and certainly not painfully. It is a small hurt, in his throat and chest, a little burning reminding him he did not deserve this. As he walks forward into his position at the altar, the hurt starts burning stronger, and his clothes feel as if they are too large to contain the smallness of his personality, and too large to restrain the vastness of his guilt.

"You may now kiss the bride."

He may.

But what if he did not deserve the bride he is kissing?

_I can write the saddest poem of all tonight._

_I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too_

**x.**

When he left, she did not weep and mourn and cry this time, no. She was tired of breaking and bending, she was tired of shattering, and she was tired of black hair and swollen eyes. When he left, she painted the nursery blue and yellow, and tried to paint the ceiling pink, but paint splashed onto her belly, making her laugh. Every moment she spends, she does not think of Remus and leaving and loneliness, but instead, wonders about the ball of thriving life inside her stomach, kicking and sucking. She thinks of the games they would play and the food she would burn.

It was five weeks later, and she was trying out a recipe for banana pudding torn from her mum's book, when there was a knocking at the door. She was careful, that Tonks, and normally she would have asked a security question, but today the knocking seemed so desperate, a longing, sad sort of knocking. She throws open the door, and of course, surprise surprise, he is there with shadows smudged on his pale, fine-boned face and his hair is feathery and loose. She wants to touch him, feel that he is real and the small ball of life in her belly screams _hope, hope, hope_.

"I am so sorry, Dora, this I-I…inexcusable, and I haven't…" He starts, and Tonks knows that if she lets him finish, they would start this entire circle again, of guilt and hope and the latter was shuddering in her stomach.

"I did some decoration." She says brightly. "Want to see?"

He follows her into the house, as if drawn to the light she seems to exude, and she points out the small toys and artifacts she had bought with their meager salary, and she pointed out the cans of baby food and newly purchased baby bottles. She showed him how she had baby proofed the corners, and had somehow managed to stow away all magical or dangerous objects above shoulder height. He follows her dumbly, staring at the back of her hair, _marveling_ at this extraordinary girl.

"And this is the nursery!" She smiles, and ushers him inside. She watches him as he goes forward, looks around at the yellow and blue, crudely-hand painted nursery, littered with rubber toys and teddy bears. She watches how he lays his hands on the blue crib, looks at the toys piled inside it, ready and waiting. There was even a plastic mobile, bribed from Fred and George Weasley, which spun and played tinkling songs when touched even lightly. She watches his shoulders shaking lightly, and realizes he is weeping as she had never seen him weep.

"You're back." She says to him, and there is a smile on her face. "You are back, Remus, and you're _not_ going to feel guilty."

"I love you." His voice, although sanded and broken, was still _Remus_, and she feels a thrill run through her, making her mouth curve into a grin.

"I love us. All three of us." She corrects him.

_Then love knew it was called love.  
And when I lifted my eyes to your name,  
suddenly your heart showed me my way_

**xi.**

Today, Teddy Lupin is born, and they are shivering with completeness and delight. He had ten fingers, ten toes, Remus's eyes and Dora's ability. She screamed when he came out of her, she screamed Remus's name in anger, just like she screamed his name when he was conceived. But when he is out, pulled out by the expert hands of Molly Weasley, they stand terrifyingly still, the stillness thrumming inside them as they survey the pink-cheeked, fat little boy with the greyest eyes and the hair that swiveled from pink to red to blue. He latched on to Tonks' breast and started sucking with an almost angry passion, as if he was afraid of the milk finishing.

"Look at his hunger for life." Remus smiled, laying his fingers on his son's soft head. "Look at him."

"He is perfect." Tonks agrees, and they both sit still and content.

_What am I to do, love, loved one?  
I don't know how others love  
or how people loved in the past.  
I live, watching you, loving you.  
Being in love is my nature._

**xii.**

Tonks is not upset about dying, instead, she is excited. She wants to see how Heaven looks like, and she wants to not have images in mirrors and footprints in the sand. She wants to meet James and Lily and Sirius, she is excited and frightened and glad. She wants to walk with Remus amongst pale heather and do all the things they did not, and she wants to kiss him, because they are both dead, they are both equal. She feels powerful in death, she does not notice her heart that is almost stopping or the lungs that don't breathe any longer. She cannot hear the battle and the screams and the sobbing, and she cannot hear the whistle of spells. She cannot hear anything except the sound of her own death, and she cannot wait, because living was nothing without Remus.

But in her last second, she thinks of Teddy Remus Lupin, one month old and beginning to smile. It is then, that for the first time in her life, she feels how Remus feels when guilt crashes onto him.

_where I does not exist, nor you,  
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,  
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep._

_X_

**Author Note: Well, I'm done, haha. I'm not sure if you'd like the entire chronological order thing, and again, not very sure about my writing style. Please, please do leave your reviews and comments, as I am very grateful for each and every single one, and read them thoroughly.**


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